17. Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.

An issue or concern that is inter-national and personal to me is war. I -as many other people- am directly affected by the war, my brother-in-law who I truly consider a brother is in Afghanistan at the moment for 365 days. I hear about the many things that happen over there and about the tragic stories that end with a soldier less. I hear about the near deaths of him and how they are attacked everyday. I heard about the story where a car was speeding to their station and the soldiers on duty didn't know if to shoot down the car or wait for their sargent to reply with his command. Thankfully the soldiers didn't wait and started shooting down the car which was full of explosives that still managed to hit the station and injured soldiers, but not as much as it would have if the soldiers hadn't made that decision to start shooting the car down. So why does the world put themselves through so much pain and grief only to keep harming themselves? In the end the only thing war does is kill many innocent lives and destroy their country that will usually end up in debt after the war.

18. If you could choose two things to change about our high school campus, what would they be and why?

Two of the many things I would change about my school Castle Park Senior High would be the new administration and all of the bad media the student body is obtaining. To start off, this new administration is treating us students as kids who haven't done any good. For instance, when there is a problem within the school they practically punish every student for the problem instead of dealing only with the culpable. Before, when we had our old administration, students would be privileged with wearing a hat if they did good in school. Now the only way for a student to be able to wear a hat is only if it has the school logo. Also, in assemblies we used to be able to say whatever we wanted and now the administration-especially Mrs. Grossman- refrains us from saying what we want to say, taking away our freedom of speech. With our old principal we would always see him hanging out around campus during lunch in the quad and he would also go to every football game including junior varsity and freshman, unlike our new principal who always stays inside her office and only goes to varsity football games because students and parents started wondering why she was never around after the first couple of games that she didn't go to. I would also like to change all the bad media the school is getting. I understand the incident with the football players did involve the students but either way they didn't get the story right making the school seem like it is gang affiliated. Another problem concerning the media was the incident with one of our teachers in possession with meth. She was caught in North Park which is no where near the school and it has nothing to deal with students yet why are we the ones who look bad? Therefore, these are two of the main things i would like to change about our campus to make it a better place.

19. Should school attendance be mandatory? In your answer, be sure to explore what the function of education is, and what our nation would look like i

Education always has a major impact in human beings life whether its just the minimum of education or if they have a doctoral degree. School attendance should be mandatory to an extent where students aren't patronized for being tardy or for the way they dress. Education is a necessity in helping shape a child's life in how their personality and future life goals may be. Also, education helps modify behavior in learning from past mistakes and how to make them better, therefore, also making it a need. Our nation needs education for our society to learn the do's and don'ts of right's and duties of our country. Education also trains humans for unity and what to expect in outcomes ahead of them.